Work

Today was my first experience with manufacturing work: a local temp firm held a cattle call for the local Energizer battery factory, and I made the cut to start tomorrow morning on 1st shift. Yes, I'm glad, because it's work, even though it's part-time and temporary (in other words, it will last as long as the work is there). I do hope to find something better for the long-term, and I am still looking, but at least the job drought is broken.

My initial impressions:

1)Discomfort: We stood outside in the cold, damp, and drizzly air and froze outside the employee entrance to the plant for about 20 minutes, because they started the orientation 12 minutes late.
2)Fear: like it or not, it's manufacturing work, and despite the facility's near-perfect safety record, there are a lot of ways to get hurt there. And there's a little bit of fear of failure, too: I don't want to fail, but I've never done manufacturing work before; I'll do the best I can with it, but I'm not sure how well I'll do.

It is a bit of a rude shock going from white-collar down to blue, and Lauren is sorry that I have to take work that isn't that desirable. But at this point, we don't have much of a choice: starting this month, it's costing us an extra $600.00 a month to put me on Lauren's health insurance. While it's very good coverage, the expense is really eating a chunk out of our monthly finances for now, and anything that can help toward that is welcome. Still, it's not the ideal job, and because it's temp work, it probably pays nowhere near what I'm used to making.

But at least it's something until something better comes along.

Moving Forward

Well, it's been a busy, productive, disappointing, unnerving, but overall good week so far, for various reasons:

1)Busy - Lauren had her annual review at work, and it went really really well. There are a few things that suggest they are grooming her for something bigger and better, so that's a good sign.
2)Productive - we both got our taxes in. I'm going to get a small refund (no small feat given how much I paid in tax and withholding), and Lauren will likely get an adjustment, because she forgot to file for the energy efficiency credit. That will get back most of what she paid in Federal this year.
3)Disappointing - because I didn't get the job I interviewed for earlier this month. Nothing wrong with me as a candidate; in fact, the interviewers commented that I interviewed well and would be a good fit for their company. However, the fact that I would have to commute down to KC did factor into their decision. It's a little frustrating; the local job market (poor as it is) is taken up by college students from campus, and for those jobs that I've applied for, I think I'm being considered too overqualified for them. I just have to keep looking.
4)Unnerving - because the events at Virginia Tech made me think about something that ordinarily no one should think about (i.e., the safety of your spouse). Granted, something like that probably would never happen here in Maryville: the staff at Northwest are well-trained and prepared, and the students (at least those I've met) are all good people. But still, it raised a worry that for me that I hadn't dealt with since working in a high school following Columbine: the tendency that you take the safety of your workplace (or your wife's workplace) for granted, and seeing events like that play out on a college campus are a little unsettling. And yes, my sympathies and prayers go out to the families of those killed or injured. No one should have to go through that kind of tragedy. Ever.

Taxing Weekend

Quick note: This weekend's been a bit busy for both of us. Thankfully, it didn't rain or snow as Weather Channel had forecasted, so Lauren and I were finally able to get outside and start gardening and mulching.

I'm still waiting to hear back on the interviews, and in the meantime, we're both filing our taxes and sweating out how much we both owe. We'll make it until Lauren gets paid again, but it's going to be a near thing to the end of the month.

Wedding Pics Now Posted

The first batch of pics from our wedding are now online. To reach them, simply find our online photo album here:

http://picasaweb.google.com/steffens.richard/WeddingPics

We're not done resizing and posting yet; I hope to get to that later this evening.

Food Notes: Bubba's and Ali's Bakery

Just a couple of in-town notes on current/ongoing favorites:

1)Bubba's, the award-winning BBQ restaurant, is now offering $9.00 buffet-style orders on Sundays ... since the place isn't big enough to hold a full buffet line, what this means is that for $9.00, any item on the menu board (assuming it's available) is available for multiple trips. We like it because it allows us to try out items that we don't order that much (such as the rib tips appetizer).

2)Lauren's Egyptian baker friend Ali, who formerly had a small place in Burlington Junction, has now opened a small bakery at the back of Happy Garden Chinese Restaurant (the small restaurant on Main across from what used to be the Subway). We stopped off this morning for coffee and some of his pastries (apple fritter and filled donut), which were some of the best scratch pastries that we've ever had. Oh, and Ali also does breads as well. Ali's hours, in his words, go like this: "We're open at 6 until about 2. But if I'm here, and someone wants something (for example, later in the afternoon), I'll open".

Wedding Photos

The wedding pictures finally came back, and our photographer did an outstanding job. Lauren has been busy sorting and printing pictures (her coworkers asked to see a small sample of the prints, but our old HP photo printer died, so we had to purchase one). On my part, I've been preparing for and off to a job interview in KC Monday and Tuesday, so that's why they haven't been posted to the weblog yet. We will post the pics as soon as we possibly can, so please bear with us. Thanks!

It's DONE!!!!!

It's finally DONE!!!!! And with no major hitches, Lauren and I are now MARRIED!!!

Can you tell that we're excited??? We're also very tired ... we stayed overnight at the hotel after opening gifts, attended a late dinner at Las Palmas (the Mexican restaurant next to the hotel), and then bade goodbye to the last of our family and friends this morning after breakfast. Then we managed to load our gifts into the car, get home, unload them, and then crash for a few hours of sleep. We both needed it.

We had roughly 76 people at the wedding (we'll wait for the final catering count to be certain), and we had a great weekend making lots of memories with family and friends. The weekend started out great: our bachelor's and bachelorette's parties were combined for a co-ed party over in St. Joe, where we dined at Fuji, the new Japanese steakhouse and teppanyaki place. Afterwards, we went over to Terrible's Casino to see how slowly we could lose the $30.00 limits we'd placed on ourselves. The rest of the weekend ranged from the absurd (our maid of honor gave us a Hallmark soundbite card featuring the "Chicken Dance", so now THAT's stuck in our heads), to the worrisome (at the Student Union, Lauren and I were stuck in the elevator for 5 minutes on our way to the reception ... and no, we DIDN'T push the stop button intentionally ... the poor elevator's brain just hiccuped, that's all), to the thankful: the weather forecast had been for light snow that morning, but it missed us, leaving us with sunny weather for the wedding and partly cloudy for the reception.

The wedding itself went off very smoothly, as well as the reception dinner (kudos to the ARAMARK staff at Northwest for their hospitality), and we thank everyone who participated in the ceremony: Mike Kyle, our minister; Dr. Jeff Loomis, who assisted; our parents and families, who travelled many, many miles to get here; our Best Man, Micah Joy, and our Maid of Honor, Jenny Heitoff; and our readers, Les Savage and Ken Sarno, who drove straight through from Urbana on Friday for the rehearsal.

Thanks also to our musicians: Tony Brown (who can play the piano very well, despite his claims to the contrary), Brent Chappelow (who got the pacing on the Bach pieces just right), Megan Wyant (who graced us with her flute playing), and especially our vocalist, Rachel Ost, who stepped in as a substitute and did an excellent job.

Also due thanks are our friends the McGary's (Frank and Dixie) who helped with the flower arrangements, and also helped us haul gifts from the church to the reception (and then from there, back to the hotel), as well as their sons, Craig and Philip, who served as our ushers. Also, Lauren profusely thanks the "Flower Assembly Group" from Friday morning, which includes the aforementioned Dixie McGary, plus Jenny, Celia Hayhoe, Lauren's Aunt Peggy and Uncle Dean, and Lauren's mom and dad.

And finally, a warm thank you to our friends, who came from places as far away as Blacksburg, VA, and as near as Des Moines, IA, to share the weekend with us.

We don't have many pictures back yet from the weekend. We're sorting through the rehearsal pictures we've gotten back, and we'll have a few more of those up in a couple of days. For now, here's a few we took on Thursday:

The sign at the Comfort Inn welcoming our family and friends:















And here's a quick cameraphone shot of my Best Man, Micah, who kept me sane throughout this weekend (hard to believe it's been 26 years ... count 'em, and we're still friends):
















We'll have more pictures two weeks from now; it will take that long for our photographer to sort through everything and burn all of it to CDs. After that, we'll be posting pics up on the wedding weblog.

Rib Crib, or The Worst BBQ We've Ever Eaten

When we're on the road, Lauren and I have usually made good choices about roadfood (either that, or else we're very lucky in that regard). I think yesterday our luck on that ran out (or at least, ran away from us).

On the way home from her friend Jenny's open house, we had hoped to stop off at Swagat, the Indian restaurant at the Zona Rosa mall complex on Barry Road. We both love that restaurant. Unfortunately, they were closed Sunday, as they were between their lunch buffet and dinner hours.

After grabbing a map of the mall to discover what restaurant choices we had available, we settled on a local Rib Crib, which appears to be an Oklahoma-based chain which is expanding in the Midwest. They had a special for all you can eat Burnt Ends, which we love but we're rarely able to get locally at Bubba's, so we ordered, expecting succulent, slightly crispy, BBQ.

What we got, we were a little embarassed by what we were served. After we walked out the door, I coined the phrase: "Dinty Moore beef BBQ", because that's what we had gotten: it looked like they had used the pre-cut, perfectly square roast beef chunks you normally see on salad bars, barely burned them, and then served them liberally doused with leftover BBQ sauce. The sides were good, especially the coleslaw. But we couldn't finish the meal, because the BBQ itself was the worst we had ever eaten.

We understand that they've won a lot of awards for BBQ in Oklahoma, so we'll reserve judgement on the whole chain, but last night's meal left us very glad that we have our local Bubba's.

Wedding Parking

Hi all,

In a previous post, I mentioned that the church we are having the wedding at does not have very much parking. Since then, we've talked to the manager of the Dollar General store next to the church, and she will let us use the row of parking spots next to the street. This is only 12 more spaces, but it's a little bit more parking. She cautions us to not use the spaces close to the store or close to the rail tressle between the parking lot and the church parking lot, because there will be some truck traffic (trash truck and a shipment truck) loading and unloading that day.

There is also a park nearby that you may be able to park next to; the north side of the park is open to parking; however, parking is prohibited on the remaining 3 sides.

Otherwise, we would suggest trying to car pool from the hotel as much as possible or parking at the campus near the student union and car pooling to the church from there.

And Speaking of Snow ...

The blizzard that was supposed to hit us lightly before moving on to Iowa started this morning at around 8. It's still snowing as of 10:00, but not as hard as it was earlier.

Driving was proving interesting at some intersections. I snapped these after taking Woodgie to work, when visibility had dropped down to a quarter-mile or less. You may not be able to tell from these pics, but by that time, the snow was falling near-horizontally, due to the wind.

Looking East Down Edwards Street















Looking South Down Our Street















Looking South Down Market Street
















EDIT: It's now about 12:30, and it's back to snowing and blowing as hard as it was doing before 10:00.

More Snow, More Snow ...

Just a quick shoutout to my friends up in Iowa. We're supposed to get about only 3-5 inches of snow here (I say only ... it's still a bit of snow), but we're hoping it melts off by the weekend.

However, in the last week, you guys are suffering through the nastiest winter weather the state has had for years (and I should know something about Iowa winters, having lived there the six years previous, including the year the state set the record for longest snow cover on the ground (late October through early May)).

Everyone please drive safe, stay warm, and be very careful, especially if you have power outages ... I'm hoping to see you at our wedding in March.

On a Serious Note: The Millenium Development Goals

Neither one of us are Catholic (although Woodgie used to be one growing up), but we both decided that we would observe Lent in a small way by doing a water/juice fast on Sunday evenings in lieu of dinner, and at the end of Lent, donating the money we would have otherwise spent on meals to a church charity. We thought it would be fitting to do this, in light of both the Episcopal Church and Lutheran Church's support of the UN Millenium Development Goals.

One of the MDGs is "the eradication of extreme poverty and hunger worldwide". While we often think of poverty and hunger as far off events in foreign countries, I'm finding as a food pantry volunteer that often, poverty and hunger are as close as your next-door neighbors or your community.

Personally, I've never experienced extreme poverty or hunger for a prolonged basis, but there have been a few tight moments in my life, especially while growing up. We were a low-income farming family who managed to squeak through every year, but we never felt that we were "poor", and there was always food on the table (although there was one Thanksgiving while I was in graduate school that was pretty bleak due to a lot of bad weather and poor crops). Apart from doing a 20 mile CROP walk fundraiser in middle school, the closest I came to hunger (in the sense of deprivation) was watching "Save the Children" fund-raising appeals on TV, and those were always far away, somewhere overseas, or in Africa. Certainly not close to home.

Both my own past experiences and my current ones have made me realize until we see poverty and hunger up close, that as long as we think of it with mindsets of "it's a far-off problem" and "it can't happen here" and "it's too big a problem to be dealt with", these mindsets intimidate us and blind us to what is needed, both locally and in other countries.

Trust me, the need is there. According to the USDA (http://www.secondharvest.org, 2007):

• In 2005, 35.1 million Americans lived in food insecure (low food security and very low food security) households, 22.7 million adults and 12.4 million children.
• In 2005, 55.6% of food-insecure (low food security or very low food security) households participated in at least one of the three major Federal food assistance programs Food Stamp Program, The National School Lunch Program, and the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children, an increase from 55.2% in 2004.

And that was roughly two years ago.

Rather than watching it from a distance, I now see it every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday afternoon, as families come through who need help. They may be struggling single parent families, or they may be single-income families with kids who have gone a week without groceries, or individuals who simply need help supplementing what they do have. And they are grateful, as we give them what we can give.

Granted, the Millenium Goals are ambitious in their scope, but it can start locally: doing such a small thing such as donating regularly to the local food pantry or to a local branch of Second Harvest, or volunteering time to work at one a few hours a week, or working on a Habitat for Humanity home is something positive. And it is something that can be done here and now.

Snowy Pictures

Okay ... it looks like Google changed something with the Blogger photo upload process, which means I have to go change a firewall setting in order to post. Oy veh ... why couldn't they leave something unbroken?

So, here are some delayed (by a few days) pics of Snowy ... not the snow outside (which we're tired of), but Snowy the kitten:

Testing, Testing ...

Okay ... this is a little frustrating. Google HAD photo uploads working, but now for some reason, even with the cache cleared, the upload function isn't working again. What gives?

This Weekend

In the forecast: more snow! Not as much as they're supposed to get up in Iowa, but another couple of inches ... something tells me that the groundhog made a small mistake this year.

Oh well ... it's a good weekend for staying in, making scratch pizza, scrapbooking (for Woodgie), and playing with the kitties.

Volunteer Work

Just a quick post for now (since I'm typing this right before bed). Today I started volunteer work with the local food pantry ... mostly a couple of hours a week on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday stocking shelves and helping clients, but also getting to know the other volunteers. It isn't hard work, but it is fulfilling, which is something I need right now.

Nothing Major to Post ... Just a Few Notes

Nothing major to post, so today it's odds and ends day:

Yesterday, we had our second encounter with the "marital-industrial" complex in town, with a student-run bridal show on campus. It wasn't that bad ... plenty of chocolate to go around, and Lauren even won a discount cert for a photography package during one round of door prizes. Unfortunately, it was for the other photographer in attendance, not the one who we had already hired and whose booth was sitting 10 foot away from us. So we politely declined.

This morning, the local vets in town are running discounts through the 28th on spaying and neutering, so we took Snowball into the vet for her shots, declawing, and neutering. We hope that when we get her back tomorrow that she isn't too mad at us.

EDIT: We got her back yesterday morning from the vet, and fortunately, she's still her cuddly, lovable self. Here is a better picture of her:

Valentine's Day

Oops ... before I forget, here's a quick post on Valentine's Day: rather than try to get reservations at A&G, we instead decided that we were going to start a tradition of cooking each other dinner every other year. Since Lauren cooked when I came down last year, it was my turn to cook this year. Sorry, there are no pictures of the meal ... I'm usually the picture taker, and I was too busy cooking it to take any pictures.

The meal itself came out very well, although it turned into a running dinner because we had to cook the Cornish hens a little bit longer than the recipe called for ... no biggie. It just simply meant we were eating dinner while watching the movie Chocolat rather than before.

Soup: I originally planned a curried pumpkin soup, but I changed my mind and used a box of Campbell's Select Gold Roasted Portabella Mushroom soup instead. This is comfort food.

Roasted Cornish Hens: These were done with a marinade of whisky, Splenda, lots of soy sauce, garlic, ginger, and freshly ground pepper, for three to four hours, then baked at 375 for a minimum of 1 hour (not 30 minutes as the recipe called for). Then, for a tasty sauce for the hens, I took a cup of the marinade, added an equal amount of balsamic vinegar, and reduced it down for 2 minutes.

Asian Spinach: to complement the Cornish Hens, I did a pretty simple stir-fry of spinach with toasted sesame seeds, minced garlic, soy sauce, and a bit of Splenda to balance the soy sauce off ... sort of a continuation of a theme.

Rice with Carrots, Lemon, and Mint: long-grain rice with a mirepoix of minced carrots, scallions, and the juice and a small amount of zest from one lemon.

Dessert: Woodgie had bought a small set of Chinese New Year specialty chocolates (the Lapsang Suchoung and dark chocolate ones were sublime). We had these with a chocolate-infused tea from the same company.

When done, she proclaimed it one of the best meals she has had.

High and Dry

Another interesting morning here in Maryville: woke up this morning to NO WATER in the house. Our city water department thinks that our meter froze: no surprise, given temps dropped down to -4 here overnight (before wind chill). Hopefully, someone will be out before noon to have it looked at.

I stopped off at Wal-Mart to pick up a couple of gallons in the meantime, but in the meantime, it's shaping up to be one of those mornings. Sigh.

EDIT: We got water service back at about 11:30, although we're now having to keep one faucet at a drip/trickle to avoid a repeat of the problem. Oh well.

Test Post Following the Conversion

Hi all ... just a test post after converting to the "new" Blogger system, which hasn't impressed me so far (let's see ... can't post pictures due to a glitch, can't edit and repost an existing post due to another glitch). As much as I like the new features, the new system is batting 0 for 2 right now.

Edit: that's fixed. Turns out that in order for the "new" Blogger to work, you have to clean out the old Blogger cookies. Thirty seconds later, and I'm able to post pictures and edit and repost existing posts.

And now I can play with the tags ...